Think About It: Lessons Learned?

A couple of lessons have been learned, sadly, over the past
month or so: Lesson #1: when something seems too good to be true, it often is.
Whether it's a sales deal that requires you to read the fine print, a web or
direct marketing come-on, or an avatar girlfriend that you apparently connect
with solely through cyber-space and cell phone calls, be skeptical. There are
bad and devious people out there, just looking to make a buck or enhance their own
sorry lives, so do your homework, ask questions, and maintain your sanity.

Lesson #2: we have apparently become rather desensitized to
violence in this country. When 12 high school students and a teacher were
killed in 1999 at Colorado's Columbine High School, that was tragic. When 29
college and graduate students and three professors were gunned down at Virginia
Tech in 2007, that was horrible. But apparently it took the stunning murder of
20 little children and six adults in a Connecticut elementary school last month
to get people to say we need to discuss guns in America. Really? Were we numb,
scared, or blind to the need for at least a serious discussion after the
incidents in Colorado or Virginia or after the movie theatre massacre in
Aurora, Colorado? Better mental health services and training? Armed guards at
every school? Who's going to pay for that when social services and police
forces continue to get chopped by cash-strapped municipalities?

We have the right to free speech in this country (that right
is chronologically listed before the right to bear arms), but you can't yell
"fire" in a crowded theater or use dirty language on broadcast TV. We earn a
license to drive a car, but you can't go 90 miles-per-hour. Can we really have
a civil discussion and look at reality in 2013 as it relates to freedom on the
internet and its costs and the relative freedom of gun ownership? Or do we want
to just accept that that's the way things go sometimes in a democracy; ho-hum,
pass the chips and dip. Think about it…